Expecting Too Much From One Conversation

Ryan and Todd have both spent time in management and leadership roles. It amazed them whenever people they managed showed up with large, risky, and not well-understood requests, and then expected an immediate answer. When confronted with big decisions, many leaders will naturally reject the initial idea and seek a smaller, less risky option—and that’s in situations where they have an existing relationship with the person presenting the proposal. When there’s no history or relationship to fall back on, managers are even more skeptical.

As a Scrum master, you need to build relationships throughout your organization. If you’re having your first interaction with a manager about a change you’re proposing, take it slow. Don’t be like Ryan (at the beginning of this chapter) and throw around a bunch of jargon. Instead, ask the manager what they need from you. They might surprise you and create an opportunity to have another conversation about a concern that’s important to them. Your job is then to show up at that next meeting and deliver on their need.

Over time, you’ll build a relationship and establish trust with that manager. Once you’ve earned their trust, you may have the opportunity to suggest a slight change to a current process or practice. For example, here’s a fun suggestion you can make if your organization uses the common Red, Yellow, Green status-reporting practice often found in waterfall environments. (Projects that are in good shape are green, ones with a possible issue are yellow, and ones that are blocked or in danger of failure are red.) Suggest starting all projects on red (instead of green) until your team has released a done product increment and gotten feedback from a customer. By making this small change, you can show management the value of customer feedback, small(er) releases, and using data to plan and forecast future work. Incremental changes like this one can help managers gradually move toward more Scrum-like ways of thinking, without making them feel overwhelmed.

Just remember that going from introduction to suggesting a change in a company process—even a small change—is something that needs to happen over the course of many conversations, not just one.